The “Debate” between Alan Dershowitz and Dennis Prager

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For decades, “The 92nd St. Y”—as in Young Men’s Hebrew Association—has been a bastion of progressive thought in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The community center describes itself as “a proudly Jewish institution that reaches out to people of every race, ethnicity, religion, age and economic class.”

Last fall, the Y featured a revealing discussion on “the Left, the Right, and Judaism” between the conservative moralist Dennis Prager and superlawyer, liberal activist, and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. David Frum joined them as moderator. It was a discussion between Jews, for Jews, and about Jewish interests, which is something Jews do quite a bit of. Highlights can be viewed here and here. Read more

Smells Like White Guilt: Christian Lander’s Whiter Shades of Pale

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Christian Lander: Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, from Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews; New York: Random House, 2010

I saw Christian Lander in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 2nd, speaking to a tiny sweater-clad audience at a small independent bookstore in the Marina District. Lander told the story of the amazing success of his blog Stuff White People Like which in about six months grew from a private joke to a New York Times bestselling book (with a reported $300,000 advance). (See Christopher Donovan’s review of the Stuff White People Like book.)

In his talk, Lander made it very clear that he is not talking about all White people, but just “the right kind of White people,” as opposed to “the wrong kind of White people.”

The right kind of White people are urban, college-educated, and from upper-middle and upper-class backgrounds. And, most importantly, they are liberal. Read more

Letter from Sweden

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Editor’s note: This was submitted as a comment but I thought it was of general interest and would get more visibility as a blog post. It is slightly edited from the original.

In Sweden the arguments from the elites are very similar.  Our elites claim that “structural racism” in the Swedish culture is a deep problem in our society.  At the same time our elite argue that Swedish culture and the Swedish people are social construction.

A very common argument is that “Swedish culture is the sum of all cultures”.  Often, our elite begin a debate with the rhetorical question: “Who is a Swede” when they argue for multiculturalism.   What they want to do is to tell us that we as Swedes do not exist. We, as Swedes can only exist when we discriminate against immigrants. This kind of argument was easy for the nationalist Swedish Democrats (SD) to reject. They just say, we exist as a people and as a people we have the right to decide who and how many people can come here to Sweden moreover, they should adopt our values.   In one debate, Congressman (SD) Matthias Karlsson just said “If we as a people do not exist, how can the Kurdish people exist, and how can you claim identity politics for them”. The journalist and his political opponent just gasp. Read more

Arguing with anti-White Bear

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Tim Wise learned a few years ago that he has nothing to gain and everything to lose from a fair and open debate about racial issues. Fortunately for him, modern technology has empowered him to create imaginary straw men to win debates against. This is a great catharsis for him, as his opponents walk right into all of his traps, resort to name-calling, and even fart.

Behold: Arguing With Xenophobe Bear: Volume Two of the “Bears and Bigots” Series.

Some thoughts…
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Derrida’s (Crypto-) Jewish Identity

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In Culture of Critique I had a brief section on philosopher Jacques Derrida’s strong Jewish identity and how that informed his writing. (See here, p. 198ff.) It emphasizes the point that Derrida thought of himself as a crypto-Jew. Despite his pose as “a leftist Parisian intellectual, a secularist and an atheist,” Derrida descended from a long line of crypto-Jews, and at one point he explicitly identifies himself as a crypto-Jew: “Marranos that we are, Marranos in any case whether we want to be or not, whether we know it or not.” Derrida changed his first name to the French Christian sounding ‘Jacques’ in order better blend into the  French scene.

Indeed, one might say that Derrida’s crypsis is typical of Jews on the left:

[Leftist] universalism may thus be viewed as a mechanism for Jewish continuity via crypsis or semi-crypsis. The Jewish radical is invisible to the [non-Jew] as a Jew and thereby avoids anti-Semitism while at the same time covertly retains his or her Jewish identity. Lyons (1982, 73) finds that “most Jewish Communists wear their Jewishness very casually but experience it deeply. It is not a religious or even an institutional Jewishness for most; nevertheless, it is rooted in a subculture of identity, style, language, and social network. . . . In fact, this second-generation Jewishness was antiethnic and yet the height of ethnicity. The emperor believed that he was clothed in transethnic, American garb, but [non-Jews] saw the nuances and details of his naked ethnicity.” (Chapter 3 of CofC, p. 91)

The Forward has an article on a recent biography of Derrida that adds to the portrait. It notes that Derrida was “acutely aware of his ethnic identity” and as a result much of his early writing was on “fellow Jews.” He took his crypto-Judaism to the grave:

Abundant details provided by Peeters prove Derrida’s lasting devotion toYiddishkeit … When Derrida was buried, his elder brother, René, wore a tallit at the suburban French cemetery and recited the Kaddish to himself inwardly, since Jacques had asked for no public prayers. This discreet, highly personal, yet emotionally and spiritually meaningful approach to recognizing Derrida’s Judaism seems emblematic of this complex, imperfect, yet valuably nuanced thinker.

In other words, Derrida was a crypto-Jew until the end and instructed his family to participate in the charade.  Read more

Geert Wilders and the Growing Jewish Influence in Dutch politics

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The rise of Geert Wilders and the new Dutch government

The Dutchman Geert Wilders is a break-away parliamentarian from the Liberal Party who founded his own Freedom Party in 2004. Since his youth he has developed an emotional bond with the Jewish state and has visited Israel at least more than 40 times. As a youngster he went there to work in the Kibbutz, a socialist experiment of collective farming, and had an abortive relationship with a Jewish girl. His second wife is the Jewish-Hungarian diplomat Krisztina Marfaimarried.

The reason for his breakaway from the Liberal Party was their point of view about immigration in general and Muslims in particular. Wilders’ concern for Muslim immigration is because he believes that Israel and the West are confronted by the same enemy. He recently declared in an interview for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot that the Palestinians are not a puny guerrilla force fighting a last stand against dispossession by the settler movement backed by the Israeli military juggernaut. They are the first line of defense of the Western world:

The Palestinians believe – and this is the nature of Islam – that Israel is their country and that they are fighting the non-Muslims in the West through it. The struggle against Israel is a struggle against us. We are Israel. The reason Dutch parents can sleep calmly without having to worry about their kids is that Israeli parents stay awake at night because their children are in the army. This doesn’t mean Israel cannot be criticized, but I’m not ashamed to fight for Israel. Read more

Recent Jewish and Muslim pro-immigration activism

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Just in case there remained any doubt, non-White groups are leading the charge on legalizing the illegals and raising even further the numbers of legal immigrants. The latest things I’ve come across (in addition to Newsweek’s predictable puff piece on Rep. Luis Gutierrez (Dem, IL) “the most passionate, tireless, and nettlesome voice in Congress on immigration matters”) is a grant from the Ford Foundation to the American Jewish Committee:

The Ford Foundation has awarded a grant of $500,000, the second in two years, to support AJC programs to strengthen intergroup relations in the United States and mobilize for comprehensive immigration reform. Read more